Anyone growing hops ?

[Mel]

Just wondering if anyone is growing hops , I have on plant, we use it mainly for sleep pillows but as it produces more I'm thinking of other possibilities...

[fatbloke]

Just wondering if anyone is growing hops , I have on plant, we use it mainly for sleep pillows but as it produces more I'm thinking of other possibilities...

You'd probably have to know the exact variety........

Only because various beer recipes often suggest a specific type to replicate a certain type of beer!

Which is probably why most would just get them through the HBS's.

My dad used to do some stuff with hops on one of the Herefordshire farms owned by Carlsberg and explained that you do need quite a lot of room for hops, well on a decent scale anyway

regards

JtFB

[Mel]

No I don't know the variety, but as I'm not very interested in reproducing a commercial product, it isn't a big problem for me I'm thinking of trying a braggot at this point

[Mel]

Here is a useful resource for hop plants for those wanting to grow them ! http://www.tinyurl.com/grow-hops

[Cellar_Rat]

Is it possible to do cuttings from hops?

[rjb222]

Actually hopes are propagated with Rhizomes. Any established plant will have to be controlled or they will take over the areas they are grown in. They are extreamly easy to grow.

[Mel]

Is it possible to do cuttings from hops?

Sort of, if you have a hop you can lay and bury a bine in a trench & if you dig it up next spring it should have rooted.

Or in spring take 6-8 inches of runner with at least 2 buds , plant straight away. bottom heat and cool upper tends to promote root growth, I use a mist propagator to keep things hydrated

Rhizomes can be used for propagation too.

It is said you need to be careful where you dispose of the end of year bines as they will take off in the spring, but that has never happened to me


I'm doing a lot of weird experimental propogating this year particularly with apples lol

[james]

I grow "First Gold", which for non commercial growers is sold as "Prima Donna", bought from The Hop Shop.

First Gold is a mildew resistant dwarfing variety with a great taste (fruity/spicy) and good AA%

A rough approximation of your home grown hops AA% can be gained thus:

With some bought hops of a known AA%, make a standard tea (1 gram of hops in 1 pint of water boiled for 10 minutes), then dissolve small amounts of previously weighed sugar until you can no longer taste the bitterness. You need to do it at least two or three times with different types of known AA% hops. This will give you a few points of reference. The more hop types you use, the more points of reference you have. Plot these on a graph (bitterness expressed as AA% versus sweetness expressed as grams of sugar added) and draw a line of best fit through the data. Then you get you're unknown AA% home grown hop, make up the standard tea and add sugar till no bitterness is tastes, plot this on the graph and read off an approximate AA%.

It's not super accurate, but it works, and its good enough for our homebrew needs.